The Urban Survivalist

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Stay safe out there.

It's been 2 years since I started this blog. After a few months I signed up with Amazon and started getting "free" gift cards every few months. Every once in a while I get an email from Amazon that says that I got enough clicks to earn a gift certificate. Those gift certificates have been coming more and more frequently lately. In fact, it was a year before I got my first one. The last few months have been great and I want to thank everyone who's used my Amazon store when you need something and you want to get it online. Remember, if you don't see anything that you like in my product links you can always use the search tab to find what you're looking for. Meanwhile, I've gotten several emails from people asking me to put a link on my blog to their store or business website. I have no problem with linking blogs. You don't even have to link me back if I like what you're saying and I like what you have to say (disclaimer: I don't always ag...

A year or two ago Rangerman over at SHTF blog made a post about a french press. I'd never heard of one but the concept made sense so ever since then I've always had the idea to get one in the back of my mind. It's never been a priority but I promised myself that if I ever saw one and the price wasn't ridiculous that I'd snatch it up. Last week I was Christmas shopping and I saw one for $4. There were actually two of them. One was big enough for one cup of coffee. The other was big enough for maybe three for $2 more. I bought the smaller one. I wanted it for camping so the smaller one looked like it would fit my needs better. For those of you not familiar with a french press it's a pretty cool little gadget. It's just a cup with a lid/plunger contraption. The bottom of the plunger has a filter. You put the coffee in the cup. Then you add hot water and let it steep for a few minutes. Push down on the plunger and the filter pushes the coffee groun...

I found this on Google news. It's an article over at CNN about off-grid living. It all seems like a great idea. And it is as long as living that way is a choice. Of course there was the bit at the end about how everyone should be doing this or we're all going to die. I contend that if everyone lived this way we'd be in serious trouble. Then again the majority of people couldn't possibly live this way. You have to be smart. You have to be resourceful. You have to have a good sense of responsibility. If you don't have the money for a really nice setup then you'll be living like a citizen of a third world country. If the situation dictates that we all have to live like that then most of us will fall into the latter category. Being forced into that situation by real environmental problems is one thing. You do what you gotta do to survive. Being forced into that situation by a government that wants to stem a problem that may not even be happening is some...

Back in 1992 a petition began circulating throughout the scientific community. This petition was drafted in response to the "growing concern" of global warming. Check it out here . Despite it's 4000+ signatories, including several nobel prize winners, it's largely been ignored by the global warming doom and gloomers who have managed to take control of the discussion and use it get rich, influence politics and convince people that they need to be told how to live "or else". The poorest countries have used global warming to demand the wealth of richer nations. The Chinese have used it to justify their one child per family policy. Businessmen and corporations have used it to get rich by convincing companies and governments that their technologies are "better" even though they're much more costly and inefficient. The super rich global warming doomers have even used it to justify their hypocritical extravagent lifestyles by claiming that thei...

First emails surface that suggest that top scientists in the field of climatology have been consispiring for years to find ways to doctor data and discredit anyone with a dissenting view. Then we find out that all of the original data that these people have based their conclusions on has beed destroyed. While they do everything to marginilize the significance of these facts world leaders are getting together for a major climate summit where they're trying to figure out what exactly we can do to stop this "cataclysmic event". I thought that the cap and trade deal was a bad idea. The same group of scientists who conspired, lied and fixed data to convince the world that we're all going to die if we don't do something now want the world's wealthiest nations to cough up 60 billion dollars over the next 5 years (that's just a lowball estimate...they admit in their report that it may actually end up being much more) to fund the measuring of every nook and c...

It's been a bit since I've picked up a new hobby. This time I was looking around a pawn shop and noticed a very nice Trek full suspension mountain bike (a Trek Liquid for those of you who know a thing or two about mountain bikes) in their usual gaggle of bikes. Expecting to see a $1000+ price tag I looked anyway. $129. Wow. Someone forgot a zero when they put the label on this bike. Anyway, I quickly snatched it up. The clerk commented on how the bike was labeled way too cheap and I thought for sure that he wasn't going to sell it to me. He didn't go past commenting about it, though, so off I went with my new bike. So what made me think about looking at mountain bikes in the first place? Well, I grew up riding a lot . If I needed to go somewhere I'd get on my bike to get there. Riding my bike 10 or 15 miles to the next town for no real reason was common practice when I was younger. Then I joined the army, could afford a car and didn't even think abo...